Reagan began his political career as a liberal Democrat, admirer of Franklin D. Roosevelt, and active supporter of New Deal policies, but in the early 1950s he shifted to the right and, while remaining a Democrat, endorsed the presidential candidacies of Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1952 and 1956 as well as Richard Nixon in 1960.[54] His many GE speeches—which he wrote himself—were non-partisan but carried a conservative, pro-business message; he was influenced by Lemuel Boulware, a senior GE executive. Boulware, known for his tough stance against unions and his innovative strategies to win over workers, championed the core tenets of modern American conservatism: free markets, anticommunism, lower taxes, and limited government.[55] Eventually, the ratings for Reagan’s show fell off and GE dropped Reagan in 1962.[56] That year Reagan formally switched to the Republican Party, stating, “I didn’t leave the Democratic Party. The party left me.”[57]

One of the things that undoubtedly resulted in these two brilliant political thinkers’ sense of abandonment was the fact that they clearly HAD BEEN abandoned by the Democrat Party as it continued to “evolve” (liberals love that word, worshiping it in place of a God who stays the same) into a degenerate spiral. And it was that profound abandonment of key Democrat liberal views – the abandonment of classical liberalism into something that can only be described today as a hybrid of Marxism and fascism – that then led these men to question their entire political presuppositions that had resulted in their being Democrats in the first place.

So, what exactly is it that makes Nazism “right wing”? Well, maybe the left would say that the Nazis were “Christian” and left wing ideologies are secular. But that is hardly true, either. I document in a previous article (“Hitler Wasn’t ‘Right Wing’, Wasn’t ‘Christian’; And Nazism Was Applied Darwinism“) that Nazism and Christianity had virtually nothing to do with one another, and that in fact Hitler was an acknowledged atheist.

In Pivot of Civilization, Sanger referred to immigrants and poor folks as “human weeds,” “reckless breeders,” “spawning … human beings who never should have been born.”

“We do not want word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population,” she said, “if it ever occurs to any of their more rebellious members.” (Woman’s Body, Woman’s Right: A Social History of Birth Control in America, by Linda Gordon)

In her “Plan for Peace,” Sanger outlined her strategy for eradication of those she deemed “feebleminded.” Among the steps included in her evil scheme were immigration restrictions; compulsory sterilization; segregation to a lifetime of farm work; etc. (Birth Control Review, April 1932, p. 107)

And I also show in a comment to that article that Nazism was far, FAR more in line with Democrat Party liberalism than it ever could be Republican Party conservatism when it came to big government and big government policies.

Jonah Goldberg points out that Nazism was in fact “far right.” But only in the sense that the Nazi Party, i.e. the National Socialist German Workers Party, was the far right of the extreme left.

American conservatism calls for a strong military defense, yes. But as we shall see, so also did FDR. And in every other aspect, consistent conservatism calls for limited and small national government. Which was the diametric opposite of Adolf Hitler’s Nazi project, which controlled every sphere of life the same way the Democrat Party tried to do during the last two years when they had power.

If you think for so much as an instant that Adolf Hitler wanted less centralized power for himself and more control in the hands of the states/districts and the individual people – as Sarah Palin, Newt Gingrich, Rush Limbaugh and conservatives constantly talk about – you simply couldn’t be any more ignorant.

That said, just what are the two fundamental issues I claim in my title that FDR would have denounced in the Democrat Party of today?

They are military power and the willingness to use it (i.e., the heart of any foreign policy) and government or public employee unions (i.e., the heart of Democrat’s domestic agenda).

These are no small matters: the former is central to any rational foreign policy and the latter has become central to Democrat domestic policy.

That leaves the other issue, the foreign policy issue of military power and the willingness to use it to deal with threats to the nation.

A speech by British Prime Minister Winston Churchill could have been given today to expose the American liberal views of Democrats basically since Lyndon Baines Johnson refused to seek re-election after liberals turned on him. It certainly powerfully applies to the Democrat positions in the war on terror – that Obama once refused to even acknowledge – of today. Churchill began:

I have but a short time to deal with this enormous subject and I beg you therefore to weigh my words with the attention and thought which I have given to them.

As we go to and fro in this peaceful country with its decent, orderly people going about their business under free institutions and with so much tolerance and fair play in their laws and customs, it is startling and fearful to realize that we are no longer safe in our island home.

For nearly a thousand years England has not seen the campfires of an invader. The stormy sea and our royal navy have been our sure defense. Not only have we preserved our life and freedom through the centuries, but gradually we have come to be the heart and center of an empire which surrounds the globe.

It is indeed with a pang of stabbing pain that we see all this in mortal danger. A thousand years has served to form a state; an hour may lay it in dust.

What shall we do? Many people think that the best way to escape war is to dwell upon its horrors and to imprint them vividly upon the minds of the younger generation. They flaunt the grisly photograph before their eyes. They fill their ears with tales of carnage. They dilate upon the ineptitude of generals and admirals. They denounce the crime as insensate folly of human strife. Now, all this teaching ought to be very useful in preventing us from attacking or invading any other country, if anyone outside a madhouse wished to do so, but how would it help us if we were attacked or invaded ourselves that is the question we have to ask.

Would the invaders consent to hear Lord Beaverbrook’s exposition, or listen to the impassioned appeals of Mr. Lloyd George? Would they agree to meet that famous South African, General Smuts, and have their inferiority complex removed in friendly, reasonable debate? I doubt it. I have borne responsibility for the safety of this country in grievous times. I gravely doubt it.

But even if they did, I am not so sure we should convince them, and persuade them to go back quietly home. They might say, it seems to me, “you are rich; we are poor. You seem well fed; we are hungry. You have been victorious; we have been defeated. You have valuable colonies; we have none. You have your navy; where is ours? You have had the past; let us have the future.” Above all, I fear they would say, “you are weak and we are strong.”

Churchill gave that speech back in 1934. Just imagine how much unparalleled human suffering would never have happened if only the weak and appeasing policies of the leftist bleeding hearts had not triumphed! The left wrongly claim to stand for peace and compassion and every good thing. But the exact opposite is true, as they have in fact murdered millions and millions of innocent human beings with their naive and morally stupid policies. And to whatever extent liberals have good intentions, the road to hell is paved with liberal intentions.

I could go on all day about Democrats taking on the views that Churchill condemned; that our enemies really aren’t that evil and how we can talk to them and reach some kind of accord short of fighting them. It is as naive and morally idiotic today as it was in the era of Churchill and – yes – Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

I did not realize this until I watched a program I viewed on the Military History Channel called “Decisions That Shook the World.” But FDR rapidly became what we would today call a neo-conservative.

In the late 1930s, FDR began to watch with growing horror as the Nazis began to take over Europe. In secret letters to Winston Churchill, he offered his moral support to the Allies. FDR knew that if the people – who did NOT want to become entangled in what they saw as a European war – were to find out about these letters, they would turn against him in outrage. The American people in the 1930s and early 1940s were crystal clear that they did not want to become involved in another world war in Europe. As it was, at the very time that the American people were the most worried about FDR secretly getting involved in the war behind their backs, FDR was in fact secretly corresponding with Churchill to do that very thing. FDR also – again secretly – ordered his military commanders to devise a secret military plan with Great Britain for when FDR was able to involve America in the war against Hitler in Europe.

Now, today, it would be very easy to condemn FDR as duplicitous. And he WAS incredibly duplicitous. FDR was a man – we find out in the words of the historians who narrated the “Decisions” program – who had no problem saying and doing things in private that he very much did not want to be known in public. As an example, FDR, in direct defiance of the United States Supreme Court – directed his Attorney General to wiretap suspected spies. That was literally an impeachable offense. FDR was breaking the law to deal with what he saw as a growing threat against America.

One of the points the historians made clear is that, “If all of Roosevelt’s acts were publicly known, he likely would have been impeached.” He most certainly would NOT have been re-elected in 1940.

FDR was reelected on the promise that he would not do what in fact he was determined to do.

In 1940, the “anti-war” candidate was the Republican, Wendell Wilkie. He had the virtue of being honest, but likely on the wrong side of history (we can’t know for sure what would have happened had the United States not become involved in World War II, but it doesn’t look pretty). Democrat FDR may have had the virtue of being right, but he was certainly profoundly dishonest.

Now, I could write how FDR was quite constant with other modern liberal presidents who say one thing and do the exact opposite (I’m speaking directly about Barack Obama, the examples of which are now already legion). But that isn’t my project here. My project is to point out that, when it came to being prepared for war and then fighting that war, FDR was fundamentally in opposition to the modern Democrat Party agenda.

That briefly stated, it was the Republican Party which ultimately came to realize that FDR was correct in his views of the military and the need to vigorously defend American national security. And it was the Democrats who came to turn on FDR’s realization and abandon his views.

They didn’t do so all at once, or right away. As much as modern liberals tried to attack Ronald Reagan as putting the world on the brink of nuclear war in his Cold War stand against the powerful Soviet Union, one President John F. Kennedy was every bit the cold warrior that Reagan ever was. And, again, any liberal who doubts this is simply a fundamentally ignorant human being. That said, it was during the Kennedy presidency that JFK cynically – and by executive fiat rather than any vote by Congress – allowed the government unions that came to own the Democrat Party lock, stock and barrel to collectively bargain as a means to help the Democrat Party. And the moral collapse of the Democrat Party was incredibly precipitous after that.

For what it’s worth, even as mainstream liberals celebrate and rejoice in the overthrow of one Arab leader after another, it is IRAN which is most benefitting from the chaos. From the New York Times:

MANAMA, Bahrain — The popular revolts shaking the Arab world have begun to shift the balance of power in the region, bolstering Iran’s position while weakening and unnerving its rival, Saudi Arabia, regional experts said.

But in light of Obama’s policy of appeasement, of asking for meetings of minds with no preconditions, allow me to rephrase Churchill’s words to suit our modern-day situation:

Would the invaders consent to hear Barack Obama’s exposition, or listen to the impassioned appeals of Hillary Clinton? Would they agree to meet that famous African, Kofi Annan, and have their inferiority complex removed in friendly, reasonable debate? I doubt it.

Allow me to share with you the consensus view of liberalism today at one of its elite headquarters of Columbia University:

Columbia University is holding a series of public hearings on whether or not to allow ROTC back on campus now that DADT has been repealed. A wounded Iraq veteran who recently enrolled at Columbia took to the microphone and asked fellow students to support ROTC. He was booed, jeered, and called a racist.

Columbia University students heckled a war hero during a town-hall meeting on whether ROTC should be allowed back on campus.

“Racist!” some students yelled at Anthony Maschek, a Columbia freshman and former Army staff sergeant awarded the Purple Heart after being shot 11 times in a firefight in northern Iraq in February 2008. Others hissed and booed the veteran.

The former soldier responded to the jeers with this awesome statement:

“It doesn’t matter how you feel about the war. It doesn’t matter how you feel about fighting,” said Maschek. “There are bad men out there plotting to kill you.”

The despicable so-called “Americans” in the audience only laughed and jeered more.

Anthony Maschek was a staff sergeant with the Army’s 10th Mountain Division. He was shot 11 times and spent two years recovering at Walter Reed. He’s an American hero and those thugs at Columbia are a disgrace. This is no different than those pieces of crap who spit on veterans coming back from Vietnam. It’s disgusting that in 2011 our veterans should have to be heckled by cowards.

FDR would have turned his back on this Democrat Party as a bunch of contemptible and despicable traitors to the United States of America. He would have looked at the government unions that today are the sine qua non – the “that without which” – of the Democrat Party machine. And he would have been disgusted that the entire Democrat Party rests today upon an inherently un-American foundation. Then this president who risked so much to keep America and the world safe from tyranny would have looked upon the modern Democrat Party and its repeated denunciation of those who would fight America’s most terrifying enemies even as those enemies grew stronger and stronger while we have grown weaker and weaker, and he would have vomited in contempt for the party that he had such a profound role in shaping.

By the very standards of the figures that you cite as your greatest heroes, I denounce you as the pathetic, vile, un-American fools that you truly are, Democrats.

I would say that you should be ashamed of yourselves, but I doubt that you are capable of that virtue in this house-of-card world that you are building now. And the problem with houses of cards is not merely that they fall; it is also that they tend to burn furiously when a match is struck.

And when the Antichrist warned of by the Scriptures for more than 2,600 years comes (as described in the Books of Daniel and Revelation), it will be Democrats, the quintessential fools, who welcome him with cheers and adoration.

There’s another saying that is appropriate here: “A lie can get halfway around the world before the truth can even get its boots on.” And that’s particularly true when “the truth” – in this case Fox News – is more like the Keystone Cops.

In this case, Fox News seems to have tied its left bootlace to its right bootlace and fallen flat on its face. In fact, they fell so hard, with their noses in some cow pie, that they could possibly even see the ratings of CNN and MSNBC.

There are too many people who just can’t understand that Barack Obama is a shameless, cynical liar. They think, “Well, if the government says it, it must be true.” When they really should be thinking just the opposite.

The use of marijuana has been linked to mental illness, including psychosis, and increases the kind of paranoia exhibited by Loughner in his writings.

However, Jennifer Griffin of Fox News recklessly and irresponsibly claimed on Sunday morning that the killer was a political conservative. Using Obama officials as her sources, she reported that “intelligence gathered by the Department of Homeland Security and shared with state officials across the United States” had revealed “a strong suspicion” that the shooter was influenced by a conservative publication called American Renaissance (AR).

This publication is on the right side of the political spectrum and is politically incorrect because of its criticism of racial preference and “diversity” programs and immigration policies that weaken the strength of a country. It has scheduled a Feb. 4–Feb. 6, 2011, conference in Charlotte, North Carolina.

One would have expected that a “conservative” news channel dedicated to fairness and balance would not be so quick to publicize the charges or “suspicions” of some anonymous federal officials in the Obama Administration who seem anxious and eager to smear conservative groups.

But without bothering to get a response, Griffin claimed, “This is based on some of the videos he posted on YouTube. This group’s ideology is anti-government, anti-immigration, and anti-Semitic.”

But a review of Loughner’s YouTube videos finds nothing about American Renaissance.

To make matters worse, it turns out that Griffin not only did not contact AR for a response but badly mischaracterized the nature of the publication.

Jared Taylor of American Renaissance told AIM that he first heard about the charge from CNN, not Fox News. He said that when he found out about the story on the Fox News website, he emailed several Fox News correspondents denouncing the allegations. “I got no response,” he said.

Eventually, he was contacted by James Rosen of Fox News. But that was after Fox News analyst Juan Williams, recently fired by National Public Radio, cited the charges as if they were true on Fox News Sunday.

Apparently using the questionable Griffin story as his source, Williams was quick to claim “there are connections between him [the shooter] and this group, American Renaissance, I think they’re called, and they are strongly anti-immigrant, they’re anti-Semitic and they’re anti-government.”

Nothing Williams said was backed up by the facts and he did not cite any.

Taylor told Rosen that the charges are “scurrilous” and that he took issue with the reference to his group being “anti-ZOG” (Zionist Occupational Government).

“That is complete nonsense,” Taylor said. “I have absolutely no idea what DHS [Department of Homeland Security] is talking about. We have never used the term ‘ZOG.’ We have never thought in those terms. If this is the level of research we are getting from DHS, then Heaven help us.”

In a statement on the publication’s website, Jared Taylor went into more detail and countered: “No one by the name of Loughner has ever been a subscriber to American Renaissance or has ever registered for an American Renaissance conference. We have no evidence that he has even visited the AR website.”

He added, “American Renaissance condemns violence in the strongest possible terms, and nothing that has ever appeared in it pages could be interpreted as countenancing it.”

A subsequent story by Griffin claimed that American Renaissance was mentioned “in some of his [Loughner’s] internet postings and federal law enforcement officials are investigating Loughner’s possible links to the organization.”

But no evidence of such postings or links was cited or has surfaced.

In this Griffin story, the source became a “law enforcement memo based on information provided by DHS and obtained by Fox News…” She falsely characterized American Renaissance as “a pro-white racist organization.”

Giving it a high degree of credibility, Greta Van Susteren of Fox News insisted it was “an internal memo” that was “put out by DHS” and reproduced the entire thing.

While American Renaissance is critical of government affirmative action programs and unrestricted immigration, there is no evidence of anti-Semitism, and there is no evidence that American Renaissance by any objective standard is a racist organization. It does deal with racial issues. But so does the Congressional Black Caucus.

The memo in question supposedly said, in relation to AR, “…no direct connection—but strong suspicion is being directed at AmRen / American Renaissance. Suspect is possibly linked to this group. (through videos posted on his myspace and YouTube account.). The group’s ideology is anti government, anti immigration, anti ZOG (Zionist Occupational Government), anti Semitic. Gabrielle Gifford is the first Jewish female elected to such a high position in the US government. She was also opposite this group’s ideology when it came to immigration debate.”

Jared Taylor countered: “AR is not anti-government, anti-Semitic, or anti-ZOG, as is clear from the 20 years of back issues that are posted on our website. The expression ‘ZOG’ has never appeared in the pages of AR, and we have always welcomed Jewish participation in our work. Many of the speakers at American Renaissance conferences have been Jewish.”

What’s more, Taylor noted that, “Gabrielle Giffords is not the ‘first Jewish female elected to such a high position in the US government.’ Barbara Boxer has represented California in the Senate from 1993, and Dianne Feinstein has done so since 1992. There are at least six Jewish congresswomen listed by Wikipedia as currently serving in the House. If this memo is typical of the research done by the Department of Homeland Security, our country is in serious danger. I telephoned DHS today to try to get the bottom of this nonsense, but apparently there is no homeland security on Sundays. The person who answered the phone said no one is there and that I should call back on Monday morning.”

He added, “Fortunately, some of the media organizations that have been reporting this story have contacted me, and have reported my assertion that American Renaissance knows nothing at all about Jared Loughner, that we condemn all violence, and that we cannot possibly be described as anti-Semitic.”

After going on the air with the false and malicious charges about AR, Fox News finally published a story with a response to the charges under the headline, “American Renaissance Denies DHS Charges, Any Affiliation With Shooter.”

A later Fox News story reported, “New details are emerging about Loughner as a law enforcement memo based on information provided by the Department of Homeland Security and obtained by Fox News suggests he may have ties to the American Renaissance group, though it’s unclear if he was directly affiliated with the publication or group.”

It is apparent that Fox News is backing away from the story, after already doing damage to and smearing the organization.

By this point, however, dozens of liberal-left media outlets and bloggers have already cited Fox News as the source of the claim that the killer was involved in a conservative group.

Taylor called for an investigation into how and where DHS obtained the bogus information and who leaked it to Fox News.

“I’d like to know where they are getting this nonsense,” Taylor told AIM. “What else are they telling other people?”

Ooh, ooh! Let me answer that one! They’re telling lies, Mr. Taylor. Demagogic lies. It’s what Obama does. He has the Midas touch in that department of political talent.

Is the Obama Homeland Security totally incompetent? You bet it is. But you don’t have to be competent when you can lie like a snake in the grass; all you need to be able to do is blame your failures on some poor scapegoat with the help of a an either idiotic or biased media.

It sounds like the Obama DHS is at a point of impending implosion, though: it’s one thing to foment lies; it’s quite another to actually believe your own lies. It sounds like the Department of Homeland Security has degenerated to the point where they are believing their own lies.

Fox News is the most accurate and most trusted name in news, as studies and surveys clearly demonstrate. But it’s success has sadly transformed it into “the mainstream media.” And many of its journalists have come from other propagandists I mean networks.